Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsandbox: Virtual Machines that feel and perform like containers

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 195 posts

Re: Microsandbox: Virtual Machines that feel and perform like containers

#41

Post by dataflow »

_factor wrote: post #38
dataflow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup I'm asking about VirtualBox mainly, I just don't understand what the heck it's doing during that time that takes so long. Although I don't recall other VMs (like say, Hyper-V) being dramatically different either (ignoring WSL2 here).

Try disabling Windows Defender and trying again.

Are you just guessing or have you actually seen the delay I'm talking about disappear as a result of this (or as a result of anything else for that matter)? Because I've already done this (yes, entirely, even the kernel mode drivers) and it's definitely not the issue.

Re: Microsandbox: Virtual Machines that feel and perform like containers

#43

Post by speed_spread »

dataflow wrote: post #11

Tangential question: why does it normally take so long to start traditional VMs in the first place? At least on Windows, if you start a traditional VM, it takes several seconds for it to start running anything . Edit: when I say anything , I'm not talking user programs. I mean as in, before even the first instruction of the firmware -- before even the virtual disk file is zeroed out, in cases where it needs to be. Yo…

Creating the VM itself is fast. It depends on what you run in it. Unikernel VMs can start in a few milliseconds. For example, checkout OSv.

Re: Microsandbox: Virtual Machines that feel and perform like containers

#44

Post by jmehman »

I've been looking for something I could host for this kind of thing - for LLM agents. Ended up on https://www.daytona.io/ as I couldn't find anything suitable to self host and realised it was a complex thing to manage. It seems Daytona is open source, including the server platform, but there is no documentation for the server element. Azure also seem to offer a service for this, it's a space that is growing rapidly.

Re: Microsandbox: Virtual Machines that feel and perform like containers

#45

Post by dataflow »

jeroenhd wrote: post #27
dataflow wrote: post #11

Tangential question: why does it normally take so long to start traditional VMs in the first place? At least on Windows, if you start a traditional VM, it takes several seconds for it to start running anything . Edit: when I say anything , I'm not talking user programs. I mean as in, before even the first instruction of the firmware -- before even the virtual disk file is zeroed out, in cases where it needs to be. Yo…

You can optimize a lot to start a Linux kernel in under a second, but if you're using a standard kernel, there are all manners of timeouts and poll attempts that make the kernel waste time booting. There's also a non-trivial amount of time the VM spends in the UEFI/CSM system preparing the virtual hardware and initializing the system environment for your bootloader. I'm pretty sure WSL2 uses a special kernel to avoid…

That's not what I'm asking about.

I'm saying it takes a long time for it to even execute a single instruction, in the BIOS itself. Even for the window to pop up, before you can even pause the VM (because it hasn't even started yet). What you're describing comes after all that, which I already understand and am not asking about.

Re: Microsandbox: Virtual Machines that feel and perform like containers

#46

Post by dataflow »

speed_spread wrote: post #43
dataflow wrote: post #11

Tangential question: why does it normally take so long to start traditional VMs in the first place? At least on Windows, if you start a traditional VM, it takes several seconds for it to start running anything . Edit: when I say anything , I'm not talking user programs. I mean as in, before even the first instruction of the firmware -- before even the virtual disk file is zeroed out, in cases where it needs to be. Yo…

Creating the VM itself is fast. It depends on what you run in it. Unikernel VMs can start in a few milliseconds. For example, checkout OSv.

You're saying this is true on a Windows host?

Re: Microsandbox: Virtual Machines that feel and perform like containers

#47

Post by drewg123 »

dataflow wrote: post #30
diggan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it is basically booting a computer from scratch, kind of makes sense. You have to allocate memory, start virtual CPUs, initialize devices, run BIOS/UEFI checks, perform hardware enumeration, all that jazz while emulating all of it, which tends to be slower than "real" implementations. I guess there is a bunch of processes for security as well, like wiping like zeroing pages and similar things that takes additi…

> You have to allocate memory, start virtual CPUs, initialize devices, run BIOS/UEFI checks, perform hardware enumeration, all that jazz while emulating all of it, which tends to be slower than "real" implementations. That's not what I'm asking. I'm saying it takes a long time for it to even execute a single instruction, in the BIOS itself. Even for the window to pop up, before you can even pause the VM (because it h…

Without any context in terms of what the VM is doing or what VMM software you use, my best guess is that the OS/VMM are pre-allocating memory for the VM. This might involve paging out other processes' memory, which could take some time.

I think task manager would tell you if there is a blip of memory usage and paging activity at the time. And I'm sure windows itself has profilers that can tell you what is happening when the VM is started..

Re: Microsandbox: Virtual Machines that feel and perform like containers

#48

Post by bityard »

dataflow wrote: post #30
diggan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it is basically booting a computer from scratch, kind of makes sense. You have to allocate memory, start virtual CPUs, initialize devices, run BIOS/UEFI checks, perform hardware enumeration, all that jazz while emulating all of it, which tends to be slower than "real" implementations. I guess there is a bunch of processes for security as well, like wiping like zeroing pages and similar things that takes additi…

> You have to allocate memory, start virtual CPUs, initialize devices, run BIOS/UEFI checks, perform hardware enumeration, all that jazz while emulating all of it, which tends to be slower than "real" implementations. That's not what I'm asking. I'm saying it takes a long time for it to even execute a single instruction, in the BIOS itself. Even for the window to pop up, before you can even pause the VM (because it h…

In defense of the replies, your initial question was very vague and left people to assume you meant the obvious thing.

Re: Microsandbox: Virtual Machines that feel and perform like containers

#49

Post by dataflow »

drewg123 wrote: post #47
dataflow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to allocate memory, start virtual CPUs, initialize devices, run BIOS/UEFI checks, perform hardware enumeration, all that jazz while emulating all of it, which tends to be slower than "real" implementations. That's not what I'm asking. I'm saying it takes a long time for it to even execute a single instruction, in the BIOS itself. Even for the window to pop up, before you can even pause the VM (because it h…

Without any context in terms of what the VM is doing or what VMM software you use, my best guess is that the OS/VMM are pre-allocating memory for the VM. This might involve paging out other processes' memory, which could take some time. I think task manager would tell you if there is a blip of memory usage and paging activity at the time. And I'm sure windows itself has profilers that can tell you what is happening w…

VirtualBox on Windows, primarily. Though I feel like haven't seen other VMs in the past start up a whole ton faster (maybe a somewhat) (ignoring WSL2). Page files are already disabled, there's plenty of free RAM, and it makes no difference how little RAM the guest is allocated (even if it's 256MB). So no, those are not the issues. VirtualBox itself seems to be doing something slow during that time and I don't know what that is.
Post reply on HN